"Happiness is not prompted by something big, but rather the little things that we encounter every day."
Imagine a world where everyone stayed at home. You had to wear a mask to go out in order to get your necessities. You had to stay at least a meter away at the sight of someone. Almost 95% of the people worked at home. Schools, universities, malls, and parks shut down. Sounds relatable right. If I had described this a few months back, you might have thought I was explaining some sort of dystopian world. This is the present situation of the world that we live in.
My college had shut down on March 5th and it has been 44 days since I have been in quarantine. Since March 5th, about 2 million people more have been affected by the coronavirus and about 150,000 dead. While writing this, there are people in other parts of the world struggling to breathe, floundering to survive, and many others living in isolation with the fear that they'd be infected soon. There are many others who have lost their jobs, homeless and starving. On the other hand, some have got stultified with this monotonous life and cribbing about the situation ignorant about the vast majority struggling. What a world has this become?
Staying isolated from everything I've been able to retrospect a lot. I remember being annoyed every morning while waking up and making my way for my classes. I miss those packed schedules and meeting my friends for lunch at least once in two weeks and fooling around. I live almost 2700 km away from my parents. I remember squabbling with them quite often and grouching about the food made by my mother. It's funny how a pandemic had to arrive for me to realize their worth. I learned that happiness is not prompted by something big, but rather the little things that we encounter every day. Walking through the campus, amid those trees and fastening my pace after seeing a crow with that tinge of morning breeze was happiness. I might have walked almost a hundred times through that path, but I had never appreciated those moments. Departing immediately after the professor leaves with your small group of friends and meeting up at the canteen for a cup of hot chocolate or cold lime juice was happiness. Staying up late at night procrastinating with your hostel roommates was indeed happiness. Watching a movie on Friday night with your parents or cooking a meal together and hearing stories about the mischiefs done by your mother in school and chortling together was happiness.
Forty-four days and counting, I wait for the day when everything would be restored to normalcy. A day when that fear would be eradicated and social-distancing, quarantine and lockdown wouldn't be the most common words that I hear. The day when I don't need to feel guilty for underappreciating those little moments.